Pacific women's basketball earns national attention

STOCKTON - People within women's college basketball are beginning to notice the season Pacific is putting together.

Jagdip Dhillon

STOCKTON - People within women's college basketball are beginning to notice the season Pacific is putting together.

The Tigers (18-3, 8-1 Big West Conference) have received votes in the USA Today Coaches Top 25 Poll the past two weeks and also received votes in The Associated Press poll this week. The official RPI rankings on NCAA.com have Pacific at 28th.

"It is satisfying and I'm proud of our kids," coach Lynne Roberts said. "It's rewarding to see them reap the benefits of what they have put into this program and it's taken us awhile to build that."

Pacific went a combined 15-45 during the 2009-10 and 2010-11 seasons before last season's 18-14 breakthrough that ended in the second round of the WNIT.

The team's aspirations have been to be in this season's NCAA Tournament ever since, and the Tigers currently hold a two-game lead in the conference race over Cal Poly (12-8, 6-3), which visits Spanos Center at 7 p.m. today. The Mustangs put the only blemish on Pacific's Big West record on Jan. 12 with a 96-95 triple overtime victory.

Pacific's senior captain Kendall Rodriguez said the team appreciates being noticed, but said avenging the earlier defeat makes it easy to focus on Cal Poly tonight.

"Being noticed matters, but we don't want it to get it to our head," Rodriguez said. "It's really cool we're getting recognized, because I think we are a good team, but we're not as good a team as we can be. So we're grateful for it, but we're not settling."

Roberts said while six victories since that triple-overtime loss at Mott Gym have kept Pacific in first place, the success hasn't made the sting of it go away.

"I'm not over that game at all and I don't think anyone is," Roberts said. "It was unfortunate that anyone had to lose because all the kids that played left it all out there."

Senior forward Ashley Wakefield, who had a team-high 23 points that night, said the Tigers lost that game in the first half, when Cal Poly built up a 49-31, and they have to come out with improved effort tonight.

Roberts said her team's focus will have to be on 6-foot-5 junior center Molly Schlemer, who had 28 points and nine rebounds against Pacific last month, making 13 of 17 shots. Tigers center Kendall Kenyon had 13 points and 12 rebounds that night, and the St. Mary's product has been on a tear with five consecutive double-doubles and 12 blocks nine steals in those games. Roberts said the responsibility of slowing down Schlemer will fall on the entire team, not just Kenyon.

Roberts said the teams both like to push the pace and she has told her team to embrace the competitiveness of this contest and learn to enjoy playing in games.

"The way to get over that loss is to bring everything we have (tonight)," Rodriguez said. "We're all really fired up to have them at our place."